Month: February 2024

A dad is sharing his first encounter with a transgender woman in his small Texas town, and the simple lesson he taught his son is inspiring hope in others.

James Eric Barlow (oddragon226 on TikTok) shared a video from his car describing how he and his son saw a trans woman in real life for the first time. “We all know that there’s people that are disgusted whenever they see a trans person,” Barlow begins. “And we all know of the people who don’t care if they see a trans person.

“But apparently, we’re a third type of person (or at least I am, I can’t speak for him),” he says, indicating his son in the backseat who chimes in with “I am, too!”

Barlow then goes on to explain how they had just had their first experience with a trans woman. It wasn’t anything major—she just walked through a door behind them and Barlow held the door for her, just as he would any other person. He didn’t even notice she was trans at first, but once he did, his immediate reaction was one we can all learn from.

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“When I tell you how happy it made me,” he says, beginning to tear up, “to be able to see somebody be out and open to the world here in small town Texas. You just gotta know how much bravery that takes. Right, Mikey?”

“Hell yeah!” the son agrees.

Barlow wanted to say something to her, but he didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable, either.

“But if you’re a trans woman and you came here to the Landmark truck stop in Clyde, Texas, just know we’re proud of you,” he concludes.

@oddragon226

our first trans woman experience #trans #transwoman #transpeoplearepeople #transrights #translivesnatter

Barlow’s video was shared on Reddit, where it’s received 37,000 upvotes and a slew of comments that prove parents set the tone for their kids’ sense of acceptance.

“Indoctrinate your children with kindness, compassion, consideration and respect for others.” – Toddthmpsn

“When I was younger I would get my hair cut by a woman named Liz. She spoke Spanish so it was hard for to understand her English sometimes. My dad spoke Spanish so would translate for her and me. I noticed Liz looked a little different then other women. But I never said anything, I never felt any differently about her. She never scared me, or made me question anything. She was just Liz. As I got older I realized she was a trans woman. And it literally changed nothing. She was still just Liz. Liz was always kind and treated everyone warmly. I havnt seen her in years but I hope she is doing well. I really liked her.” – PerplexedPoppy

“This literally happened to me as a child in the 80s. A cashier at a store we visited suddenly started dressing in a feminine style and it appeared that they were transitioning. My mom explained to me in an age appropriate way that sometimes people decide they want to be a man instead of a woman, or a woman instead of a man. She told me that people would probably be mean to the cashier and it was important for us to remember that and always be polite to her, as we would anyway. This was way before trans issues were as mainstream as they are now, but my mom had seen an episode of Phil Donahue where transwoman discussed their stories, and she recognized it as a medical issue. Core memory for me.” – ZipCity262

“As a trans woman, im deathly afraid whenever I have to go to rural areas. I can instantly feel physical tension when I walk into a gas station or a restaurant in these areas. Thank you for being supportive. Trans people need you now more than ever.” – rainbow_lenses

It really is a simple matter to accept people as they are and treat all humans with dignity, kindness and respect, even if we don’t fully understand them. And as this dad and son show, it’s a simple matter to demonstrate non-judgmental acceptance in front of our kids so they hopefully will grow up without being bound by chains of bigotry they’ll later have to learn to unload.

This article originally appeared on 7.7.23

It’s been of a roller coaster ride for True Detective fans. The first season stormed out of the gate, with a gruesome, years-spanning mystery, one mind-blowing long take, and two perfectly paired performers, both doing top shelf work. The second? Well, that was less beloved. The third got things back on track, and the fourth — which just ended last weekend — took things in a slightly different direction, even while catching the very public ire of the show’s original creator.

So will there be more in the crime anthology series? You betcha.

Per Deadline, not only will there by another season of True Detective, but it will be handled by the fourth season’s showrunner, Issa López. Lopez’s work on Night Country, which starred no less than Jodie Foster, earned strong reviews but also strong criticism from Nic Pizzolatto, who ran the show’s first three seasons. He called its callbacks to previous seasons “so stupid.” About any other complaints viewers might have, he said, simply, “Can’t blame me.”

López refused to fight back. Co-star Kali Reis, however, felt differently, taking to Twitter/X to write, “That’s a damn shame…but hey I guess ‘if you don’t have anything good to share, sh*t on others’ is the new wave.”

Obviously HBO has López’s back, because she’ll be back for more, presumably with another big star who doesn’t normally do television.

(Via Deadline)

Friday’s game between the Miami Heat and New Orleans Pelicans was feistier than expected, as a fracas between Jimmy Butler and Naji Marshall sparked a fight — with Jose Alvarado and Thomas Bryant getting into it to further escalate things — in what eventually became a Miami win.

Unsurprisingly, the NBA handed down a number of suspensions as additional punishment for Miami and New Orleans’ edition of Friday Night Fights, with Butler and Marshall each being given a one-game suspension for their actions, with Alvarado and Bryant being given three games each for escalating things by coming off of the bench and fighting. Nikola Jovic also got a game for leaving the bench area.

The suspensions all follow what the NBA has done over the last two decades to try and curb physical altercations on the court, as the players involved get a punishment but the bigger punishment always comes for anyone that escalates things further. That has been the case for years as the NBA never wants a fight to turn into an all-out brawl, and for the most part players learn that lesson quickly once they miss game checks for leaving the bench. Alvarado and Bryant not only left the bench but also escalated things by fighting themselves, which tacked on two extra games to their suspensions.

The Atlanta Hawks currently hold a 3 game lead on the Brooklyn Nets for the 10th and final spot in the Play-In Tournament in the Eastern Conference, but their path to a second-half run to a better spot in the Play-In just got considerably more difficult.

On Friday night, All-Star guard Trae Young suffered a torn ligament in a finger on his left hand in a loss to the Raptors and the Hawks announced on Sunday that Young will have surgery this week in New York and will be re-evaluated in a month.

During Friday’s game vs. Toronto, guard Trae Young suffered a left hand injury. He underwent an MRI yesterday at the Emory Sports Medicine Complex, which revealed a tear of the radial collateral ligament (RCL) in the fifth finger of his left hand. He will undergo surgery to repair the RCL on Tuesday at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York and will be re-evaluated in four weeks.

Young has had a terrific year, averaging 26.4 points and 10.8 assists per game for the Hawks, but will now have to rehab his injury until close to April. Being re-evaluated in four weeks means he will likely require a bit longer before returning to the court, and for a Hawks team that has been struggling with their star, having to go a month without him will be a tall order. Atlanta is currently 24-32 having lost three in a row and sits two games behind Chicago for ninth in the East.

Melania Trump has always been a smart dresser (or maybe not always), but perhaps one sartorial choice from her First Lady era stands out amongst the rest. In the summer of 2018, during a trip to Texas to meet migrant children who’d been separated from their parents (thanks to her husband’s zero-tolerance policies), she wore a jacket that bore a strange, cryptic message: “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” At the time many speculated that the message was a tone-deaf “let them have cake”-style salvo, concerning the problems her husband had caused in the world. But now it appears the message had a more specific target.

The New York Post got their mitts on Katie Rogers’ forthcoming book American Woman: The Transformation of the Modern First Lady, from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden. One of the juicier tidbits is that Melania was engaged in a quiet tussle with her stepdaughter, Ivanka.

Ivanka was reportedly planning to move in on Melania’s territory. That included usurping the East Wing of the Executive Mansion, traditionally the purview of the First Lady, and making it more about the First Family. Trump himself told his wife that he thought it best if Ivanka was “helping her and working with her” in her FLOTUS duties.

Melana, Rogers writes, did not like this. And so began a battle between her and who she dubbed “The Princess,” with both avoiding each other despite working in such close quarters.

At the time of Melania’s apparently misread jacket incident, she and Ivanka “were locked in a quiet competition for press coverage,” Rogers reported.

Alas, things didn’t work out quite as Melania hoped. “If she ever waged a battle over the issue,” Rogers wrote, “it is one she clearly lost: For four years, it was hard to see where the operations of the family business stopped and the Trump administration started.”

If this report is accurate, then it wasn’t about cruel indifference to human suffering caused by her husband. It was just a petty little attack from one powerful woman to her also powerful stepdaughter. Maybe this helps explain that little death stare Melania shot Ivanka during the 2020 RNC.

(Via NY Post)

“Forever” singer Ciara’s post-baby bouncebacks are always mind-blowing to see. After welcoming her fourth child in December, Ciara is already back to sporting stunning hip-hugging looks at industry events.

Yesterday (February 24), during the 2024 Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards, her husband, Russell Wilson, and viewers at home weren’t the only people in awe of The Color Purple star’s beauty. In fact, users online pointed out that Pedro Pascal stopped in his tracks to admire Ciara on the pre-ceremony carpet.

In a video clip originally captured by E! and reposted by a fan page, folks across X (formerly Twitter) joked about what Pascal’s intrusive thoughts are tempting him to say.

“Pedro was wondering if Russell [Wilson] can fight,” wrote one user.

“Oh honey, he was mesmerized,” penned another.

“Every gay man chooses a diva to imprint on. It’s clear he chose her ,” joked a user.

Although Ciara didn’t take home the SAG Award, she didn’t let that stop her from enjoying the career milestone with a fabulous post on Instagram. “My 1st SAG Award Nomination #TheColorPurple,” she wrote. “Let’s Go.”

But something Ciara did celebrate at the event was the upcoming 20th anniversary of her debut studio album, Goodies. While chatting with E! correspondent and actress Lavern Cox, Ciara talked about what that meant to her. “It’s a blessing to me,” she said. “To know that I was a baby [when that dropped] and I’m still dreaming big and living my dreams out…it motivates me so much”.”

Billie Eilish is a bonafide pop star. Since her 2015 breakout song “Ocean Eyes,” the songwriter and her brother Finneas have been constant on the music charts. She’s even picked up a few notable accolades, including nearly ten Grammys Awards and an Oscar. So, it is safe to say Eilish has a massive fan base.

Yesterday (February 24), during the 2024 Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards, the “What Was I Made For?” singer came face-to-face with her biggest superfan—Melissa McCarthy. As the pair presented the Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series, McCarthy asked Eilish to sign her face and she ever-so graciously obliged with a permanent marker.

In the silly bit, McCarthy gushed about how much she loved Eilish and joked that she actually met her several times. The wildest exchange happened while Eilish was “still in utero,” thanks to Eilish’s mother being McCarthy’s improv teacher. Then McCarthy made the biggest request, and Eilish jumped on the opportunity to silence the overjealous actress temporarily.

“Oh, ok,” she said. “I thought you were gonna be like, ‘I don’t want to ruin your pretty face!’” Eilish couldn’t help but break character by laughing, but not before covering McCarthy’s mouth.

Watch the full clip below courtesy of Entertainment Tonight.

McCarthy took to Instagram to boast about the moment. “I got to check an item off my bucket list last night, and I’ll never wash my face again,” she wrote.

Last night’s SNL was a touch awkward. The host was Shane Gillis, one of the more popular comedians right now…who happened to have been fired by the show a few years back over past racist and sexist jokes. To his credit he didn’t go the Gina Carano route and start hanging out with Ben Shapiro. That’s one reason SNL welcomed him back to a show he never got to perform on in the first place. The opening monologue was a touch rough, with strained laughs over gay jokes and jokes about down syndrome. But Gillis scored big laughs for a pre-taped sketch dragging arguably the most ridiculous thing Donald Trump has done in the last week and change.

The sketch was a fake trailer that finds Gillis as a loser who sucks at basketball — that is, until he receives a gift from Trump himself: a par of those $400 gold sneakers he was hawking last weekend. Do they make him better at basketball? Of course not. But they do give him the confidence to lie — lie about making basketball shots he missed, about his weight, about whether or not he’s good in bed. (He’s not.) The film’s title? White Men Can Trump, natch.

Elsewhere in the episode, Gillis took part in a parody of those Liberty Mutual ads featuring spokesman Doug and his anthropomorphic emu associate. They make a house call for someone who’s paying too much for car insurance, but things quickly go sideways. You can watch that sketch in the video below and the Trump sneakers one above.

With every primary win — and every legal loss — Donald Trump gets closer and closer to having to show what it’s like when someone runs for president from jail. On Saturday the serially indicted candidate nabbed yet another state: South Carolina. Has that humbled him? Pshaw. It’s only made him angrier. At this weekend’s wacky/scary CPAC he made bone-chilling promises of what he’d do if re-elected, so creepy that SNL couldn’t help but compare him to one of Batman’s most formidable foes.

During Weekend Update, Colin Jost played a clip from Trump’s post-victory CPAC speech, which Jost jokingly described as a “more moderate [and] unifying tone.” (Spoiler: It was not.)

“November 5th will be our new liberation day, but for the liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors and imposters, it will be their Judgment Day,” Trump raged.

“Where did I hear that before?” Jost wondered. “Oh right: Bane.”

Bane, of course, was one of the secondary baddies in 1997’s Batman & Robin, then, some 15 years later, the main villain of The Dark Knight Rises. Played by a mushy-mouthed Tom Hardy, he was depicted as a rabble-rouser chaos agent, taking over Gotham and defying law enforcement. Certainly doesn’t sound familiar.

Later co-anchor Michael Che brought up Trump’s ridiculous $400 gold sneakers, joking that one “can check them out on the feet of the guy getting dragged off your flight.”

You can watch SNL Weekend Update in the video above.

Remember when Donald Trump was toast? He’d dined with anti-Semites, his business was found guilty of fraud, he’d launched a scammy line of NFTs. The Republican Party thought they could finally move on. What a difference a year and change makes. Now he’s improbably back on top, spewing nonsense and dodgy garbage like it was 2020 or 2016 all over again. And so, on the most recent SNL, they gave prime real estate to dragging Republican wimps for letting this crap happen once more.

The show’s Cold Open found four Republican senators — Jim Risch (Mikey Day), Marco Rubio (Marcello Hernandez), Lindsey Graham (James Austin Johnson), and Tim Scott (Devon Walker) — having a victory lap meal after Trump’s win in South Carolina. They proceeded to whine about how the former president is again causing chaos, only to then praise him to the hills.

“Sometimes I do not know what my party is doing,” Day’s Risch said. “I mean, I’ve been pushing for Ukraine funding for the past six months. It’s essential to American security. And Trump just killed it with one phone call. The man doesn’t care about this country one iota. Sometimes I think he’s downright dangerous.”

“And you just endorsed him, right?” asked Hernandez’s Rubio.

“Yeah. Big time. Big time,” Risch shot back. “He’s great.”

Risch brought up that Trump called Rubio “Little Marco.”

“I’ve never been able to shake it,” Rubio said. “People still yell at me in airports. He kind of made my life hell.”

“And you endorsed him, right?” asked Risch. Of course he did.

Later Johnson’s Graham brought up that Trump doxed him back in 2015, giving out his personal cellphone number at a speech. “Had thousands of his people call me up to yell at me, threatening my life,” he recalled. “Had to get a new phone!”

Well, look at him now.

Graham let slip that he’s worried Trump will never go away, that “sometimes I think his ass is gonna live 1,000 years.” But that didn’t stop the group from praising him, one calling him “the greatest president since Reagan,” another since Lincoln.”

So which repeat will this be? Will Trump and the GOP win like in 2016, or will they flame out as in 2020 yet still continue to make the nation worse? For now, though, we can laugh at how the Republican Party has turned into a bunch of wimps.

You can watch the sketch in the video above.